Carbonated drinks account for a substantial portion of the commercial beverages sold every day. Worldwide sales of Coca Cola beverages alone is an estimated 1.7 billion servings daily. The processes used to produce these carbonated beverages traditionally relies on mechanical type processes, such as McCann carbonators, jet mixers, and pressurized vessels. These processes are typically run in batch or semi-batch operations, and can be limiting in terms of process handling and controls.
At the center of each of these carbonation techniques is the requirement that a gas dissolve or solubilize into a liquid. Carbonation specifically refers to the dissolution of carbon dioxide into a liquid, but other gases are similarly dissolved into a liquid. In any instance of this dissolution, the goal of the mechanical process is to produce air bubbles that are small enough to reach the diffusion limits of its overall surface area in contrast to the volume of the bubble; in other words, making air bubbles small enough that the surface area to volume ratio reaches a maximum for complete diffusion of the bubble. Mechanical mixtures currently used cannot reach that limitation, and cannot do so in a continuous process.